Birthday Wishes
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Birthday wishes are paid in full.


**Title:** Birthday Wishes  
**Universe:** XXXHolic  
**Theme/Topic:** Doumeki's Birthday  
**Rating:** PG  
**Character/Pairing/s:** Doumeki, Watanuki, Yuuko, Himawari, Mokona  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** None I can imagine. Probably OOC though. XD  
**Word Count: **1,236  
**Summary:** Birthday wishes are paid in full.  
**Dedication:** Jab- Just because I miss you. LOVE ME. ;;  
**A/N:** This is retarded because I originally had one idea and then I got another, and just sort of got lazy and switched to the second one somewhere in the middle of this. It's like, a partitioned story. OTZ. Oh well, at least that is one on my list done.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

"Close your eyes and make a wish!" 

Doumeki paused upon hearing that particular statement come out of Yuuko's mouth, instantly wary in a curious sort of way. "Will this wish cost me anything?" he inquired, sensibly.

Himawari laughed. "Doumeki-kun, it's just a tradition, isn't it?"

But Yuuko's eyes glimmered, and Doumeki knew—just like she did— that tradition was one of the most powerful forces in this world. "Birthday wishes," Yuuko began with a small, sideways smile, "are already paid for in full, Doumeki. Didn't you know?"

"Will you just _blow out the candles already?_" Watanuki demanded, all indignant when he saw droplets of wax falling onto and hardening on top of his carefully prepared homemade icing.

Yuuko giggled— a bit flushed from the alcohol— and ignored Watanuki for the moment. Instead she looked right at Doumeki, into him and perhaps even past him all in the span of a second, despite the drunkenness. "A birthday marks the passing of a year— the price for your wish is already paid in full."

Doumeki blinked, but understood implicitly. "One year of my life?"

She nodded. "The birthday is a ceremony that marks one year closer to the end."

Watanuki grumbled irritably at all the melodrama that seemed to envelope every bit of his existence, down to even the smallest details (i.e. an arch nemesis's birthday party in the park). "That is an unbelievably morbid thing to say to someone on their birthday Yuuko-san. And there is wax all over the cake. Why can't we do anything like normal people?!"

"My, at that price you'd better make it a really important wish then, Doumeki-kun!" Himawari encouraged Shizuka, and smiled in such a way that no one could tell whether she was simply humoring what she thought was another one of Yuuko's jokes or if she was truly cautioning Doumeki into making a wise decision.

"Oh my god at this rate we're going to be here until _my_ birthday."

Yuuko simply laughed at Watanuki's ire and downed more sake. "People wish for big, important things all the time on their birthdays, Watanuki Kimihiro," she said, voice low and teasing. "One should never rush these sorts of decisions. They could change the entire course of your life in the blink of an eye, after all."

"Right!" Mokona echoed, and drank straight from the bottle. "Delicious!"

Watanuki sighed hopelessly. "The ice cream is melting."

In the meantime Doumeki listened to their bickering with only half an ear before turning back to look at the candles again instead, their lengths growing smaller and smaller under the lick of flames the longer he waited. Somehow it felt like a ticking clock; the power of his birthday as it waned perhaps— the power of a wish paid with a year in the life.

Beside him, Watanuki breathed in impatience, one hand on his hip, cake server poised and ready in the other.

Yuuko and Mokona drank.

Himawari smiled expectantly.

All while the smoke from the candles curled up, up, up into the evening sky above them, where it was devoured by the waning chill of winter as it fought for strength to fend off the encroaching spring just a little bit longer.

Doumeki didn't let any of those things rush him.

Instead, on the evening of his eighteenth birthday, Doumeki Shizuka stared at the corresponding eighteen burning candles atop his cake and thought about a wish that had the power to change the course of his life in the blink of an eye. But more than just that, he thought about millions of other people in this world as well, everyone out there who must have grasped desperately at the same offered wish on their own birthdays, the lot of them intent on getting something— _anything— _in return for the year they had just given up to be that much closer to death. He thought about their desire to be recompensed for the year that they'd wasted or suffered or that they'd simply lived through with no particular thoughts towards joy or sorrow.

On their birthdays he knew that they would all wish for increasingly big and important things to come and change their lives as their lengths slowly ticked away, year by year.

And after a very long while—after a lot of _thought—_ Doumeki closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"God I am never making you cake again," Watanuki grumped waspishly when it took a little _too _long, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Doumeki smiled.

He blew out the candles.

And as he did, he felt the strength of his birthday surge to its pinnacle for a brief, blinding moment before fading away with the life of the tiny flames. A single, brilliant flash of something unearthly and powerful.

On the evening of his eighteenth birthday, Doumeki Shikuka blew out the eighteen corresponding candles on his birthday cake and didn't make a single wish.

"_Thank you_," Watanuki breathed after the other boy was done, and immediately moved to flick the hardened wax droplets off of the frosting before cutting and serving. "Have the first slice, Himawari-chan!" Kimihiro sing-songed—immediately chipper again— and promptly elbowed Doumeki out of the way so he could get at the side of the cake with the icing roses on them.

"Thank you, Watanuki-kun!"

"I want a rose too!" Yuuko announced.

"Me too!" Mokona echoed.

"THERE ARE ONLY TWO. Each of you can have half."

"I don't need a rose, Watanuki-kun! Please give them to Yuuko-san and Mokona."

"B-but Himawari-chan, I made one especially for you!"

"Yay, roses! Thank you, Himawari-chan!"

"You're welcome!"

"See Watanuki? Roses for us!!"

"FINE. STOP YELLING."

His part done at this point, Doumeki sat patiently to the side and smiled a little bit as he listened to everyone tease Watanuki into a yowling, flustered mess, the birthday boy taking a deep breath and looking up above for a little while, where he watched the final few wisps of candle smoke as they were devoured by the greedy evening sky—the very last vestiges of his seventeenth year on this earth.

And as he watched them fade away, he thought to himself that even if a year in the life was nothing but a price to some people, to others it could be its own reward, if only they let it be.

"Oi, Watanuki Kimihiro," he murmured after a long, thoughtful moment, averting his gaze from the heavens and focusing instead, on the people around him. On the life he did not want changed in any one single instant, save by the power of his own two hands.

Watanuki blinked and turned around to face him, right in the middle of serving the first piece of rose-decorated cake. "What now? And don't just say my name like that."

"You should have made enough roses for everybody," Doumeki offered sensibly, completely deadpan.

The other boy immediately bristled—as expected— and pointed the cake server at Shizuka threateningly. "I don't care if it's your birthday, _we already decided who is getting what_," he declared angrily, and went back to serving cake and ice cream with a haughty toss of head. "No roses for you."

Doumeki smiled to himself and enjoyed every minute of it.

Meanwhile, from across the table, Yuuko smirked and saluted Doumeki with her sake dish—knowingly.

She didn't say another word about wishes for the rest of the night.

**END**


End file.
